Ever wonder why some people achieve massive success while others stay stuck in the grind?
In this article, I’ll break down the concept of Big Wins and show you how focusing on a few key strategies can outshine the usual advice.
What do I mean by Big Wins?
“Big Wins” are the game-changers that transform your financial life, going beyond minor tweaks and daily sacrifices. They’re the strategies and actions that drive substantial, long-term progress, like setting up automated systems or negotiating significant salary increases.
Instead of getting bogged down by small, incremental changes, focusing on key moves can lead to dramatic results and real success.
Let’s compare two people trying to get an edge
John, 28, earns $62,000/year as a project manager. He used to have $8,200 in credit card debt from overspending, but he’s been slowly paying it down over the last two years, and now it’s $6,400. How?
He tried all the typical personal finance advice: He set up a budget, cut back on his daily lattes, and made a list of goals he wanted to achieve. Yet last week, he took an honest look at his life and realized he’s still treading water.
Despite paying off part of his debt, he still has years ahead of him in debt—plus, he has no real savings or investments, and something always comes up, causing him to yo-yo back and forth on his goals.
Chris, 32, earns approximately $120,000. Four years ago, Chris was making about $60,000/year, but he was barely getting by—he had $50,000 of student loan debt and, most days, would eat the free snack bars at his office instead of buying lunch.
Yet within four years, Chris paid off $50,000 of debt, amassed a savings account of tens of thousands of dollars, and more than doubled his salary. To do this, he set up automated systems to pay off his debt. He turned his skills into a side income, earning over $1,000/month on the side.
He knew he was slightly socially awkward, so he took courses to improve his social skills and negotiated multiple salary increases, including a $50,000 raise two months ago.
The key difference between John and Chris
John focused on tiny, meaningless tactics experts told him he “should” do. Chris, the successful student with the dramatic results, focused on doing a few important things and mastering them. He focused on Big Wins.
Chris is, in fact, a real person — the only student who has joined every single one of my courses.
A national reporter also wrote about Chris in a recent 6-page Fortune profile of my teachings.
There’s a reason why many of my IWT students have results like Chris’s — results that include earning tens of thousands of dollars more every year, paying off $50,000 in debt, and leapfrogging their peers to landing their Dream Job in their 20s — while so many other people are stuck cutting back on $3 lattes with no discernible results and a side of soul-crushing guilt.
Another real-life example from my podcast focusing on Big Wins
Meet Michelle and Kevin. They are $300,000 in debt and are drowning in debts mortgages, credit cards, car loans, and student loans. Despite this financial strain, they still splurged on a ridiculously expensive car.
[00:28:48] Ramit: Okay. Let’s see. Michelle, let’s do the net worth. Can you read the word in bold and then the number in full next to it.
[00:29:00] Michelle: Sure. Under assets there’s $251,000.
[00:29:02] Ramit: Okay. Next.
[00:29:03] Michelle: I keep going. Okay. So investments is $43,700. Savings is $500, and debt, $628,500
[00:29:14] Ramit: Okay. Total net worth?
[00:29:16] Michelle: Negative $333,300.
[00:29:19] Ramit: All right. What do you think about that number?
[00:29:22] Michelle: Not where I want it to be.
[00:29:22] Kevin: Nowhere near where it should be.
[00:29:25] Ramit: Okay. So the 251,000 is your house.
[00:29:30] Michelle: Yes.
[00:29:30] Kevin: Yes.
[00:29:30] Ramit: Okay. And your investments, fine. Savings, okay. And your debt, break that down for me. $628,000 of debt. What is that?
[00:29:39] Michelle: So 414,000 is the mortgage. 30,000 is my car. 69,000 is Kevin’s car. My student loan’s 18,000.
[00:29:54] Ramit: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:55] Kevin: Mine are about 12,000.
[00:30:02] Michelle: Credit card debt, about 73,000.
[00:30:07] Ramit: 73,000 in credit card debt.
[00:30:09] Michelle: Right. So one of them is a loan for 55,000, and the credit card debt’s 18,000.
[00:30:15] Ramit: What’s the loan?
[00:30:17] Michelle: It’s a consolidation of all the other credit card debt, so that’s why I put it all under the same.
[00:30:24] Ramit: Okay. What’s the interest rate on that consolidation? Do you know?
[00:30:28] Michelle: 17%.
[00:30:29] Ramit: All right. It’s effectively credit card.
[00:30:31] Michelle: Right.
[00:30:32] Ramit: How come we spent so much time talking about 7-Eleven snacks but we’re over here with over $70,000 of credit card, a 69,000-dollar car loan?
[00:30:45] Michelle: I know. Yeah, I knew that was coming. I don’t even know why we got that car, to be honest. Because we did the math on it, and we couldn’t afford it. And then I don’t know what happened, and we– not that I don’t know what happened. I know what happened.
[00:31:00] Ramit: What happened?
[00:31:01] Michelle: We still went for it because I was just being an enabler, and I said, yeah, it’s okay. We’ll figure out how to make it work.
One solution we discussed on how to improve their situation is the perfect example of a Big Win. They can sell that expensive car and put the money towards one of their larger credit card debts. Even though selling the car at a loss won’t feel good, achieving that Big Win will feel great after paying off a credit card.
[01:02:09] Ramit: Yeah. What do you want to do to fix cost? We need to get this number down.
[01:02:13] Michelle: The glaring numbers, obviously the car.
[01:02:16] Kevin: I guess I’m really going to have to go and figure out what options I have to getting out of that car payment.
[01:02:25] Michelle: Because we can’t do anything else.
[01:02:29] Kevin: I definitely would love to get into a new car payment. I just don’t know how to go about it. I guess I would’ve to go to a dealership, look at some cars, and then see what options I have.
[01:02:36] Ramit: No, fuck that. You’re not going anywhere near a dealership. Every time the two of you go into a dealership, you end up buying another luxury car.
[01:02:43] Michelle: Yeah. I’ve never felt good leaving a dealership ever.
[01:02:45] Ramit: Oh, shocking. That’s really shocking. Wow.
[01:02:47] Michelle: Yeah.
[01:02:48] Ramit: So, no, what do you want to do?
[01:02:53] Kevin: I don’t know.
[01:02:54] Michelle: Sell the car.
[01:02:56] Kevin: Sell the car.
[01:02:58] Ramit: It’s going to suck. You’re going to lose money. But over the course of 12 months, 18 months, 36 months, that’s when you’re really going to start to see those savings. And it’s not like you’re going to get a big fat check that says, here, you did the right thing. It simply means that the amount you’re paying towards your car payment is slowly going to go down. You’re going to have a little bit more cash every month. And that is money that can be used for what?
[01:03:23] Kevin: Credit card payments.
Michelle and Kevin are lucky because they can realistically achieve this Big Win by selling their luxury car and using the money to pay off their debts.
Why focusing on Big Wins leads to bigger impact
True masters of human behavior understand our shortcomings and use systems, automation, and judicious use of our limited willpower to tackle the things that really matter while ignoring the rest.
Once you adopt this mindset, you’ll see it everywhere. People dutifully try to cut back on small daily expenditures, then get frustrated when they add up to very little…and yo-yo right back to their former behavior.
You’ll see them sporadically jumping from expert to expert, as others jump from diet to diet, searching for the one “magic bullet” that will solve all their problems while never understanding the mechanics of what actually works.
Ironically, if you suggest they focus on doing a few Big Wins (e.g., learning how to negotiate their salary or earn money on the side), the same people will claim they’re “too busy” to do that. Indeed.
How sticking with the familiar may be hurting your progress
This is a fascinating wrinkle in human behavior. People will continue to do something — even if it doesn’t work — instead of potentially trying something that might work but is novel (and therefore scary) to them.
- Even if their closest friend has used these strategies and techniques to pay off tens of thousands of dollars of debt
- Even if they see examples of people just like them who have changed their lives
- Even if they trust that the techniques work for other people, many of us will use barriers like “Well, that might be for HIM…but I have [INSERT SEEMING UNIQUE SITUATION THAT IS NOT REALLY UNIQUE AT ALL]”
I find this human tendency astonishing. This is why you see people who have been working out for 3 years but haven’t lost much weight. Yet when you suggest they try getting a personal trainer — even for a week — they say, “I could never do that! It’s too expensive.” Same with diets. And money. And relationships.
IWT students focus on Big Wins instead of minutiae
IWT students don’t worry about saving $2 or $3 on lattes, knowing that in the grand scheme of things, that money is largely meaningless — plus, as cognitive misers, we have limited cognition and attention, so each additional thing we try to focus on means an overall reduced amount of willpower and attention.
If you had to use your limited willpower to save $2 a day for something you love rather than learn how to negotiate a $10,000 salary increase, which would you rather do?
Minutiae-focused people try to focus on everything, rarely prioritizing. They obsess over their monthly spending as much as turning the oven light off, never understanding the futility of trying to trick human nature. They use phrases like “I just need to…” and “Yeah, I really should…” and “If I just try harder this month, I should be able to…”
…but you don’t have to take the same path as everyone else. How would it look if you designed a Rich Life on your own terms? Take our quiz and find out:
Big Wins: A key difference between IWT and other “expert” advice
Here is a short primer on the difference between the “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” approach and many others.
There are a few Big Wins where you get them right, and you almost never have to worry about the small things. If you can focus on the 5-10 Big Wins rather than 50 little things, you can have an insurmountable edge in life.
If you start investing early, pick a sensible asset allocation with low-cost funds, save for big events in the next 10 years (wedding, down payment on a house, kids, vacations), focus on having great credit, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t care about. Do these things, and you’ll be ahead of 99% of others.
What the “experts” say vs. what I say
Here are several examples of typical advice you’ll read in magazines, newspapers, and blogs…contrasted with my teachings, which I’ve tested with over thousands of students.
THEY SAY: “Keep a budget! How can you cut your spending if you don’t know where your money is going?”
I SAY: Nice in theory, but it almost never works. Nobody wants to keep a budget (it makes people feel bad about themselves), and if you study people who pick up personal finance books, only find the first chapter saying: Let’s create a budget. You’ll predictably see those people shut the book and put it right back on the shelf. Ironically, “experts” who recommend that others keep a budget rarely keep one themselves.
Had they tested this worthless advice with even 10 people, they would see that 10/10 would fail to maintain a budget for the past 2 months, a laughably terrible result. Their natural exhortation, should they ever decide to test their terrible lifelong advice, would be, “These people should try harder.” Sigh.
THEY SAY: “No, you can’t buy those jeans. No, you can’t afford those shoes. No, you can’t take that trip. No, no, no.”
I SAY: Who wants to be told what you CAN’T do with your money? For too long, money experts have been telling us all the things we’re not allowed to do instead of telling us what we CAN do. Guess what? I want to live a rich life. I WANT to buy nice things.
I want to travel to Vegas, San Francisco, or LA to visit my friends and go out. I WANT to buy a round of drinks for my friends or send a nice gift to my family.
So, if you want to buy $300 jeans or a $1,000 weekend in Vegas, great! Instead of judging you and making you feel guilty, I’ll show how to do it — how to live a rich life by spending EXTRAVAGANTLY on the things you love, as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.
Don’t just take my word for it. Meet Annie and Emery, a couple in their late 30s/early 40s who came on my podcast with a significant financial problem affecting their relationship. They have a high combined income, but one partner makes more than the other, leading to frustration over those tiny purchases.
[00:01:20] Annie: We went on vacation. We have a budget of, say, $2,000 but when we get there, it just felt like we’re not really saving a lot of money. And we would go out to eat, and I’m not a big drinker, so he would go out and have beers and cocktails, which is fine, but it did add up and we came home and we spent double what we were hoping for because we did go from city to city. We also eat out pretty often. That’s one of our big things, is we do splurge on food.
[00:02:06] Ramit: Okay. Where’d you go on vacation?
[00:02:08] Annie: Went to Paris and went all the way down to Lisbon.
[00:02:14] Ramit: Nice. Okay. So you both went to Paris and Lisbon. How long was the trip in order for this budget to be 2,000 bucks?
[00:02:26] Annie: It was 10 days, 11 days.
[00:02:29] Ramit: Okay. Is this a common recurrence, like you pick a number and then you end up spending more than you had planned?
[00:02:35] Annie: We actually generally don’t even pick a number. We don’t really save for our vacation. That’s part of the problem. We usually spend as we go. We’re pretty frugal. I usually book hotels last minute, so it’s way discounted, and we take trains. We don’t really spend a lot of money in hotels.
[00:03:04] Emery: I thought that it was a reasonable budget, but it would probably be hard to stay within those confines. But I figured let’s give it a shot. If nothing else, it was a challenge, and let’s see if we can do it once we get there. Our commitment to the challenge tended to fade at times on both ends. We were there for a Taylor Swift concert.
[00:03:24] That’s the reason why we went to Lisbon to begin with, and so the trip wasn’t really in the budget anyway, but we had Taylor Swift tickets, so we’re like, well, I guess we’re going to Europe. But I think she brought it the point of the beer. So we’d order a meal, which you get a table full of fresh seafood for $60 in Lisbon. It’s amazing. And then I’d order a 5-dollar beer, and the 5-dollar beer was the thing that would later be mentioned.
[00:03:53] For me, that’s one of the themes of why we reached out to you on the show from my end, was there’s an inconsistency in terms of when we choose to feel tension and express tension to each other. And sometimes I just don’t know when it’s going to happen, and it comes out of nowhere, and it’s like, okay, I didn’t know that that beer or was that bottle of tequila we’re buying for this party going to be a problem? Sometimes I don’t know.
[00:04:18] Ramit: All right. What’s the problem?
[00:04:22] Annie: Well, now we’re over budget.
As you can see, this isn’t just a small splurge on a pair of jeans. It’s an entire trip to Europe to see a Taylor Swift concert. Fortunately for them, this is a situation they can navigate together with open communication and a shared plan to achieve their Rich Life.
[00:51:05] Ramit: We know the number that Annie has proposed for you to make, which would be $50,000 a year. Do you feel that that number is comfortable, Emery, that you could achieve that in this business?
[00:51:16] Emery: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:51:17] Ramit: Great. What’s the time period?
[00:51:22] Emery: I think before winter.
[00:51:24] Ramit: This year?
[00:51:27] Emery: Yeah. I think by the end of the year.
[00:51:29] Ramit: Okay, I like that. I like that. Annie, what do you think about that?
[00:51:32] Annie: I think with having a business partner, it’s possible that he can do that.
[00:51:41] Ramit: Let’s talk about what would happen if this is achieved and what would happen if it’s not. Let’s say that at December 31st you’re making 7.5k per month. You’re hitting your numbers, 50k net. Emery, what are you doing with that money?
[00:52:02] Emery: Buying a car that we don’t have to worry about. Putting money away to where I can feel like I bought our next couple vacations or something with the kids. Some upgrades to the house that we’d like to do, investing.
[00:52:21] Ramit: Okay, fine. Sounds like a grab bag. It just sounds like a bunch of random stuff. What’s the one thing you’re doing with your money? Have you thought about it?
[00:52:35] Emery: Just feeling a little bit better about myself for one.
[00:52:40] Ramit: Not a very satisfying answer, Emery, if I can be honest with you, but I don’t mind. We’re coming back. That’s why I’m here. Don’t worry. Annie, what if Emery delivers exactly what he said? He’s making 7.5k or 50k net by the end of the year?
[00:52:54] Annie: That would make me feel a lot better about, yeah, investing in additional things with a property so we’re not having to deal with it so much. And our 20% guilt-free spending would be higher, so I’m able to do more things and get a new car. I would love a new car. We never get new cars. I feel like our relationship would be a lot better because when he is confident and when he knows he’s making the income, it does make a difference in our communication.
[00:53:32] Ramit: All right. Hey, tell the world. It’s sexy when everyone’s hitting their numbers. All right, that’s spoken like a true optimizer. Okay, fine.
[00:53:42] Emery: I feel like I would be helping relieve some stress that Annie feels when she feels the need to work and to spend so much of her time and mental energy on this subject. And we could spend more time shutting off our emails after 6 o’clock and spending time with our children and going for a walk without having to talk about budgets.
When you’re chasing Big Wins and financial success like Emery and Annie, it’s important to look at the resources you’re starting with and make a plan. You might be surprised with how far you can go with the skills and capital already at your disposal. And for some of you, you can still travel for a Taylor Swift concert in the process.
THEY SAY: “Stop spending on X, Y, and Z. Oh, you want to know about earning more” [Crickets]
I SAY: There’s a reason why most personal finance experts write about cutting back and constant frugality, yet they don’t write about earning more:
They don’t know how.
Now, cutting back relentlessly on the things you don’t love is an important part of living a Rich Life. But earning more is at least as important.
There’s a limit to how much you can save — but not how much you can earn. You can’t out-frugal your way to being rich.
THEY SAY: “You should search around for the right accounts. You should call banks and try to bargain. And be sure to negotiate your salary sometime!”
I SAY: You already know what you “should” do — yet few of us do it. Instead, I provide the exact word-for-word scripts, phone numbers, and exact accounts I use so you don’t have to think. You can open the right accounts, negotiate your salary, automate your money, and get on with your life.
You can find those exact scripts below:
THEY SAY: “Do this. Do that. Not that!!”
I SAY: Read virtually any money or career advice, and you’ll see a laundry list of tactics. The funniest examples are (1) where books/columns try to teach you about the difference between corporate and municipal bonds.
Who cares?? What person ever woke up in the morning and said, “YEAH!! I REALLY NEED TO LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STOCKS AND FIXED-INCOME STRATEGIES!!” and to create a raw list of ideas of so-called “businesses” you could start on the side: Plumber, freelance writer, freelance nurse, freelance nanny, freelance cardiothoracic surgeon.
Are you seriously kidding me? As if people simply need a list of ideas? Yes, THAT is what’s holding me back! Ahh! What a great idea!! Now that I see this 2-word IDEA, I know exactly how to turn that into side income, including marketing, positioning, targeting, referral strategies, pricing, lead generation, and qualification!
These tactics assume people need to be “educated” — a belief that’s so deeply held that it’s become an invisible script. “Ah, if we just educate these poor people and show them the compound interest chart, they’ll wake up from their spending stupor and realize the critical importance of financial management!”
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As Clotaire Rapaille wrote in his terrific book, The Culture Code,
“Years ago, Tufts University invited me to lecture during a symposium on obesity.
Lecturer after lecturer offered solutions for America’s obesity problem, all of which revolved around education. Americans would be thinner if only they knew about good nutrition and the benefits of exercise, they told us. Slimming down the entire country was possible through an aggressive public awareness campaign.
When it was my turn to speak, I couldn’t help beginning with an observation.
“I think it is fascinating that the other speakers today have suggested that education is the answer to our country’s obesity problem,” I said. I slowly gestured around the room.
“If education is the answer, then why hasn’t it helped more of you?”
There were audible gasps in the auditorium when I said this, quite a few snickers, and five times as many sneers. Unsurprisingly, Tufts never invited me to lecture again.”
We already “know” we need to exercise more, eat healthier, control our spending, and maintain our relationships better. So why don’t we?
I’ve spent 10+ years studying that nexus—the difference between what we CLAIM and what we actually DO—from a psychological and persuasive perspective.
Short answer: When it comes to changing human behavior, education alone is not enough.
6 Big Wins For You to Achieve
If you get these Big Wins right, you’ll almost never need to worry about minutiae like “Can I afford this appetizer?” or “Should I spend $2.50 on this mocha?”
The beautiful part about Big Wins is you do the work upfront — and they pay rewards for the rest of your life. For example, one $5,000 salary negotiation in your 20s can be worth over $1m over your lifetime. How many lattes is that worth?
- Automate your finances
- Start investing early
- Improve your credit score
- Land your Dream Job
- Negotiate a raise
- Earn money on the side
Next time you hear the same old tired advice of keeping a budget or cutting back on $2 lattes, ask yourself: Has that really worked for the millions of people who’ve tried it?
Are they really not “trying hard enough?” Or is there a systemic problem urging people to waste their limited cognition on near-meaningless tasks with little reward… should we focus them on high-leverage areas that will result in massive payoffs?
It’s one of the best things I’ve published (and 100% free), just tell me where to send it:
